The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Knafaim Club for young people is starting a new season and invites everyone to come and get involved. We’ll be meeting every Friday at 6:00 P.M. at the Ilan Club on the second floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. For more information, contact club coordinators Elan Chackelevič at elan.chackelevic@gmail.com or Mark Garas at margaris146@gmail.com.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Dubi Mišpacha Club invites children aged 0-3 and their parents to come take part in club activities at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesdays. For more information contact Alexandra Žitkauskienė-Khenkin by calling +370 672 50599.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community will host a concert to celebrate the winners of the Nehama Lifshitz (Nechama Lifšicaitė) song contest at 6:00 P.M. on November 3. Performers: Marija Maminskaitė, Lukrecija Šiaulytė, Estera Reches, Emilija Lopaitytė, Alfredas Miniotas,
Elzė Liškauskaitė and Deividas Bartkus under the direction of Rūta Mikelaitytė-Kašubienė and professor Nijolė Ralytė.
The same program will be performed on November 7 at the concert hall at the Einav Center in Tel Aviv together with performers from the Nehama Lifshitz Yiddish song studio in Tel Aviv.
The Martynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library hosted an international conference called “Rethinking Trauma: Studies of Roma and Jewish History in the Baltic States and the USA.” Academics from the United States and the Baltic states who gave presentations pointed out Roma and Jewish history is often neglected and talked about how this history affects the present.
The goal of the conference was to explore the social, cultural and political mechanisms behind how the Roma and Jewish communities rethink the trauma experienced during the Holocaust and what significance this trauma holds today in the Baltic states and the United States.
The conference was organized by the multicultural children’s and youth center Padėk Pritapti, the Roma Social Center, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the Department of Ethnic Minorities, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, the Social Anthropology Center of Vytautas Magnus University and the Lithuanian Roma Community. Partial financing came from the US embassy in Vilnius, the Baltic-American Freedom Fund, the Vilnius municipality, the EVZ fund and the Active Citizens Fund.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
The Sabbath begins at 6:05 P.M. on Friday, October 14, and concludes at 7:14 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Dubi Club at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius offers supervised club activities for children aged 3 to 6, meeting every Sunday from 12 noon to 2:00 P.M. For more information contact Margarita Kozhevatova at +370 618 00 577.
The harvest has been gathered, Jews have built sukkas and are celebrating with friends and family. That is what was, but now there are only echoes, to keep the traditions and to survive, thanks to our rescuers, for whom there are no statues.
The difficult, crowded and confusing streets of Vilnius remind us of our shared pain. This pain envelopes a Jew and makes him try to share it with, with a Lithuanian, a Pole or some foreign visitor. But without malice, with love for his neighbor, but always remembering, so it might never happen again.
An exhibit is being prepared for the traditional gallery on Pylimo street. This will be diaries with pastel in hand, recording life as it is, but also with an eye to the philosophic and the tragic. Stay tuned for more information.
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club invites competitors who play badminton, indoor soccer, volleyball, basketball and/or ping-pong to apply to play in the continuing tradition of the Lithuanian mini-Makiabada. Send an email to info.maccabilt(at)gmail.com before October 23 if you’d like to participate and for more information.
The first volunteer Lithuanian soldiers who fought for the country’s independence are today undeservedly forgotten. They were often simple village boys or hired hands, less frequently Tsarist army recruits, who defended our right to live as free people. What’s most interesting is that it wasn’t just ethnic Lithuanians who fought in those battles for independence, there were groups of people of other ethnicity who fought. The idea of freedom was cherished by women as well. Among those who received the Order of the Cross of Vytis were women. Širvintos was and is a town with a diverse ethnic make-up and the location of one of the fiercest battles for independence. Lithuanian Radio and Television tells the little-known story and reveals unknown aspects of these battles for independence.
Program in Lithuanian viewable here.
The Sabbath begins at 6:22 P.M. on Friday, October 7, and concludes at 7:31 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
Sukkot, or Sukkos in Ashkenazic, begins at 6:17 P.M. this Sunday, October 9.
The Festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple.
Giršas Rafael is celebrating his birthday October 6 and we wish him the very best. He has been an active member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community since its inception in 1988 and has served as a member of the executive board of the Šiauliai community and the Lithuanian Jewish Community in past years, achieving much of significance. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
On October 3 a ceremony was held in the Švenčionys city park to mark the anniversary of the onset of the mass murder of Jews in the region in the first week of October, 1941. In total over the course of the Holocaust approximately 8,000 Jews from the city and surround district were murdered.
Kristina Sizonova moderated the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community executive board member Ela Gurina who is the chairwoman of the Holocaust Victims Commission, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska, deputy mayor of the Švenčionys district Violeta Čepukova, Pabradė’s Rytas Gymnasium history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė and others.
Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius:
Monday, October 3:
6:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur, lesson on the holy day, kapparot ritual
Tuesday, October 4:
5:30 P.M. Supper before fast
6:10 P.M. Kol Nidre
6:30 P.M. Fast begins
Wednesday, October 5:
10:00 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:00 noon Izkor
5:30 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:30 P.M. Niila prayer
7:38 P.M. conclusion of fast, dinner
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky on Yom Kippur:
Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator for implementing strategies to combat anti-Semitism and foster Jewish life in Europe, visited the Vilnius ghetto and other memorial locations Wednesday, the Lithuanian Jewish Community reported.
She called attention to the poor state of monuments during the tour and called for more care and maintenance of such sites in Lithuania.
LJC staff member and guide Viljamas Žitkauskas provided the guided tour and told the visiting official about the 700-year history shared by Lithuanians and Jews, the importance of Vilnius as the Jerusalem of the North and the ruins left in the wake of the Holocaust.
LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky accompanied von Schnurbein on the walking tour and said: “Vilnius is special in that it’s not enough to just see it. The buildings, the statues, even the paving stones have a deep and significant history. You have to hear Vilnius. I am pleased von Schnurbein found time in her busy schedule to visit the most important sites and to learn about our history, culture and traditions.”
Following a pause in activities, the first general meeting or jamboree of Litvak scouting groups will take place at 2:30 P.M. on October 6 at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. For more information, please write skautai@lzb.lt.
Natalija Dvorakovskaja passed away October 2. She was born in 1949. She was a long-standing member of the Klaipėda Jewish Community. We send our condolences to her husband Alekandras and the family members she leaves behind.
Photo: Artist Jenny Kagan’s immersive exhibition “Out of Darkness” in Kaunas, Lithuania, July, 2022 (photographer Gražvydas Jovaiša).
Near the site of one of the genocide’s most heavily photographed atrocities, lighting designer Jenny Kagan brings the city’s wartime past “Out of Darkness”
by Matt Lebovic, Times of Israel, October 1, 2022
The 1941 Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas, Lithuania, was among the Holocaust’s most heavily photographed aktions against Jews, but many of the city’s current inhabitants have never heard of the atrocity.
On June 27, 1941, a group of pro-German Lithuanian nationalists tortured and murdered at least 50 Jews at the city’s Lietūkis garage. During the massacre, a German soldier took photos of dozens of Lithuanians, including children, cheering while a man called “the death dealer” beat Jews to death with a crowbar.
Among the Jewish men murdered that day was British artist Jenny Kagan’s grandfather, Jurgis Stromas, who owned the Pasaka (Fairytale) cinema in town. At one point during the public slaughter, the “death dealer” climbed atop a mound of corpses and performed the Lithuanian national anthem with an accordion.
